Worlds Collide
by shiftyjake
Summary: A conversation between Barbara and Walter that had to have taken place at some point off screen. Takes place shortly after the events of "For the Glory of Merlin."


Nana and the Nuñezes left the Lake house with the knowledge that their children would be back by morning. Nana declared that she would make a pie for Toby and his friends, which piqued Dictatious' interest. The blind troll trundled off across the street to the Domzalski house, much to Barbara's relief. That left Walter, who stood at the arched entrance to the living room, adjusting his jacket and glancing at her repeatedly, as if waiting for some cue from her as to what he should do next. Barbara crossed her arms and glared at him, letting him stew.

Finally, she kicked the door closed and asked, "Why?"

He'd been tugging on a sleeve and he froze, eyes wide. "Why… what?" he asked slowly, the corners of his mouth ticking up into the slightest hint of a smile.

"Why would you, a grown man... " She waved her hands at him. "Or whatever, try to kill a sixteen-year-old boy?"

"Oh, that." There was a quaver in his voice and he cleared his throat.

"I invited you into my house," she said, jabbing a finger at him. "And you attacked my son. With knives."

"I wasn't trying to kill him then," Walt said.

"Then what were you doing?" Barbara asked, cocking her hip and crossing her arms again.

"I was ordered to get the amulet and kill him that night," he said. "They said it was a test of my loyalty. I told them I wasn't able to kill him. I even let him twist my arm so I'd have an injury to show them when I got back. I'd been arguing for weeks against attacking him, but they caught on." He sighed and leaned against the archway, hunching. "Things… escalated from there. Thing is, I can make excuses to myself about what I did when Bular was still around. There was a death threat hanging over my head every day with him. But then as soon as he was gone, I sent a sorcerer after Jim. Do you remember how that ended?"

"Yeah. I do." Pushing her glasses up her nose, she stalked into the living room and began setting the cushions back on the couch, quietly using the movement to think. When she turned back to him, cushion in hand, he stood just outside the archway, close to its edge and watching the cushion warily as if ready to jump behind the wall if need be. "I think… I think I heard you screaming," she said.

He relaxed a little at that and nodded. "The enchantment was deep and I took your pain as well as my own."

"So it hurt?"

"Yes."

"Good," she said. Walt winced at that. That was good, too. "But that doesn't answer my question. Why?" She put the last cushion back on the couch and stared hard at him, waiting for his answer. He looked at the floor, hands in his pockets. Twice he seemed as if he would say something and then stopped.

"He was going to get us killed," he said finally. He met her eyes as he spoke, though his head was still canted downward. "My tribe. My… family."

"How?" She sat on the couch at one end of the L. Still slouching, he came to sit at the other end, resting his elbows on his knees, his hands folded in the air between them. It was as if he was trying to make himself smaller, she thought.

"By rescuing our familiars," Walt explained. "Has he told you about them?"

"About the babies you steal? Yes."

He flinched at her tone. "I know we're wrong," he said. "The way we're made is wrong. Everything about our existence is wrong. I know that." He rubbed his hands together, speaking slowly, carefully piecing each thought together to be spoken out loud for the first time. "And Jim is… decent. He cares about people, about doing the right thing for the right reasons. And when decent people encounter something as deeply wrong as a changeling, they feel compelled to do something about it.

"But wrong or not, we are. We exist. I'm one of the oldest. I've mentored more young changelings than I can count, introduced them to the human world. I would have done the same for…" He caught himself and looked up at her. "Um… Did Jim tell you about Enrique?"

"Yes, he did." She took a deep breath, knowing she needed to ask the next question, but dreading the answer. "Walt. Did you have anything to do with that?"

"No." He straightened a little as he said it, his voice more forceful than it had been until now. "I was against it. There was no reason for it. But then it was done." He slumped down again and ran a hand through graying hair. "Once we're here, there's no going back. And if I didn't care about them, who would? Certainly not Gunmar."

Walter sat up suddenly and turned his whole body to face her in his seat, one knee bent and resting on the cushion, one arm leaning against the seat back. He looked at her earnestly, almost desperately. There seemed to be a kind of pleading fear in his eyes, begging her to understand when he didn't really believe that she would.

"Jim could not do otherwise than try to save a group of innocent children from an eternity of infancy and lives unlived. But as soon as he did, then what? I suppose those of us that happened to be out in daylight would die immediately. If they happened to be around humans, they would cause a panic. Who knows what would happen next, in an office or at an airport? How many humans dead? How many of us?

"And let's suppose that there's a certain number that would survive the sun and the humans. Then what? Some of us can pass for trolls, but many can't. I can't. The Trollmarket types would lynch them on sight, and they're downright cosmopolitan compared to those still living in traditional tribes. And even the ones that could pass have been living among humans for long enough for the world of Trollmarket to be foreign. How long would it be before they made a mistake and outed themselves? So, what then? Go hide in a cave after years of living as a human? Would you be able to do that?"

The question seemed to be rhetorical, but Barbara thought about it anyway. Would she be able to do that?

"We didn't deserve that," he said. "So, yes. I tried to kill a sixteen-year-old boy." His words dripped with self-disgust. He rubbed his face. "We were drafted, you know. We didn't volunteer for this. Please don't think I mean that as an excuse. We're not innocent. My people are wrong, but what else could I do but defend us? And if I didn't, who would? The other trolls believe our existence is grotesque, and even our own makers have nothing but contempt for us. Maybe they're right to. I don't know."

They both sat quietly for a while. At first, Walter searched her face for a sign of … well, she wasn't sure what. Forgiveness, maybe, or perhaps just understanding. But she turned away, not sure yet what she thought and a little afraid that he might see something that even she wasn't yet fully aware of. He was just too good at reading people, and she'd always worn her heart on her sleeve.

She rubbed her eyes under her glasses. Today there was a centuries-long war that she had to account for, when yesterday there hadn't been. It was almost funny.

"Barbara…" he said in pleading tones.

Without looking at him, she held up a hand. "Let me think," she said. She heard him stand and she looked back, thinking he was going to leave, and trying to come up with the words to protest. Instead, he walked into the dining room. There, he silently picked up the broom where she'd dropped it, forgotten, after their charade with the cop, and began to sweep up the potting soil that dusted the wooden floor, making it gritty under his feet. She curled her legs under her, watching him help her in the only way he could right now.

The terrible thing was, she wanted to forgive him. She wanted to forget all about trolls and small children stolen and trapped in otherworldly hellscapes and just curl up on the couch with him and catch up on House of Cards. This time she'd get dinner right and they wouldn't end up ordering Chinese. They could have a couple of glasses of wine and maybe go to bed since Jim wouldn't be home until morning anyway. There had only been a couple of nights together before Walt had disappeared. Maybe they could pick up where they left off.

His methods were dishonorable, but the goal wasn't… Not completely. Right? She could forgive that. Right?

Still, something bothered her, kept her from forgiving everything and asking him to stay the night. She turned the problem around in her head, trying to find what it was that niggled at the back of her mind.

"Do the Gumm-Gumms ever hurt the familiars?" she asked. When she spoke, he was in the process of sweeping a pile of soil into a dustpan. He stood, pan in hand and looked around the room, searching for something.

"Trash bags?" he asked.

"Pantry," she said. He disappeared into the kitchen where rummaging sounds were followed by the snap of a plastic bag.

"It's rare these days," Walter said as he re-entered the dining room, trash bag in hand. "But there have been changelings who betrayed the cause or ran away after failing in their duties." He dumped the contents of the dust pan into the bag. "Even if they managed to hide, they wouldn't escape punishment. They'd get a message through and someone or something on the other side would kill the familiar." Kneeling by the broken pot, he gathered the pieces of terracotta. "Of course, we were forbidden from helping those that had been crippled in that way."

"There's really no other way, is there?" she asked. A life unlived because of eternal youth was simply a life postponed, and therefore not so abhorrent that something needed to be done about it immediately. But the outright murder of children was something else entirely. She couldn't take refuge in naïveté. She thought about it all again, prodding the sense of unease as if it were a sore tooth. Still there.

"Not for honorable people, no." He was silent for a while, sorting through the pieces. "Do you suppose we could salvage it?" he asked, fitting together two jagged edges of pottery and holding it up to her. From across the room, she couldn't see the seam. "I think all the pieces are here." Without moving his head, he raised his eyes from the broken pot to her face.

Oh, don't we think we're so clever, she thought, but smiled a little as she did so. Did he come up with those double entendres on the spot or did he plan them? Ah, she thought. There it was.

To her chagrin, she realized that the conflict between Walter and Jim was as distant and intellectual to her as climate change. A thin and amorphous anxiety had never been enough to get her to stop using the AC in the summer. From what she could see now, neither one held any serious animosity for the other. Earlier that night, Jim hadn't hesitated to invite the changeling back over to the house to help explain everything. Cracking Walt over the head with a broom handle a few times had been enough to dissipate most of her own anger over the conflict. What did that say about her, she wondered.

"What was the plan, Walt?" she asked, ignoring his question. Lowering the terracotta, he leaned back on his heels, still kneeling, the patient and attentive servant. Her palms were damp from where she'd held them tucked into her elbows. She wiped them on her pants as she stood and crossed the room to stand in front of him. "What would you have done if you'd managed to kill my only family? Would you have comforted me? Gone to the funeral with me? Or would you have just disappeared, leaving me to bury my boy alone?"

She'd expected him to stand up when she approached, but he remained still. So she pushed it, wanting to see how close he would let her get, how much of an invasion of his space he could tolerate.

It turned out he could tolerate a lot. Barbara now stood barely a foot in front of his knees, forcing him to crane his neck up to look her in the face. Faced with an accusatory and angry woman looming over them, especially one as tall as Barbara, any normal person would have moved. The power differential would be too much to bear. Walter just knelt on the dirty floor, hands in his lap, his back a little slouched, accepting it, taking it. Then again, he wasn't a normal person, she reminded herself. He looked down at his hands and then up at her, his brows knit in puzzlement.

"I-I don't know," he stammered. "I never thought that far ahead. If I had…" he shook his head and looked back down at his hands. "You sort of… snuck up on me. By the time I even began to understand, it was too late."

"What could there possibly be to understand?" she demanded.

"Um…" His eyes darted around the room and his throat clicked when he swallowed. "We're not supposed to have friends, you know. No competing loyalties. Relationships are utilitarian. People are tools. This person for this purpose. That person for that purpose. We are whoever we need to be to shift people and things into their proper positions to attain our goals. You were a way to stay close to the Trollhunter. Then you were a shield against him. Somewhere along the way you started to just be … you." He let out a self-deprecating huff of a laugh. "I'd gone a bit more human than I realized, I suppose."

"What do you know about being human?" she asked with more venom than she had intended. At her words, he placed his hands flat on the floor near her feet, forcing his back lower, almost like a bow. No, it was a bow. The gesture was alien, terrifying in its humility. Suddenly the power differential was too much for her and she stepped back.

"Walt…" she began, unsure of what to say. He lifted his back enough to look up at her again and changed. With a crackle of green energy, the man before her was replaced with a gangly green creature, horned and caped, sharp and angular. He'd done it twice tonight already, but it was still shocking and she stared openly.

"No more pretending," he said, his voice a little rougher, a little deeper. "This is me. This is the world I live in. Given the choice, I'd happily live in yours, but that's never been an option for me. In my world, one lowers oneself before those that have power over one's life. I'm at your mercy, Barbara. I'll accept any judgement you give me. I've hurt you. I've deceived you. I was a part of the rift between you and your son. I used you shamefully and I nearly got you killed.

"But please understand: I came back for you, only you. I train Jim to protect you. For Jim and Gunmar, this is some epic battle of good versus evil, but that's too abstract for me. I don't know if it's the nature of a changeling or my own personal failing, but doing good for its own sake doesn't move me. I'm not even sure what that means. It's selfish of me, I know, but I only care who wins inasmuch as it affects the people I care about. It's a short list, and it's gotten shorter recently, but you're at the top of it. I'll do whatever is in my power to do to protect Arcadia because you're in it.

"This isn't blackmail. I'm not bargaining with you. I will continue to do anything I can to defeat Gunmar, and I'll always do it for you, even if you never want to see me again. I know this…" He looked down at his hands, long bony fingers and black claws. "I know what I look like. I know what I am. I know I want impossible things. I want you. I just want you. But only tell me what my fate is. I thought I knew. I'd given up. But now... I don't think I can bear not knowing."

"Okay, calm down," she said, half to him and half to herself. He exuded a kind of barren, desolate honesty that was overwhelming. "You're really dramatic when you're green, you know that?" she said, releasing some of her own tension. The corners of his too-wide mouth quirked up a little. "This isn't the end of -" Hang on. Wasn't it? She kept forgetting that. It was certainly the end of her world as she knew it. She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself, grasping her shoulders as if the room had grown suddenly cold.

"I know what you mean," she said finally, "About this war. There wasn't one yesterday, but today it's here and it's always been here. It's crazy." She laughed a little at the absurdity of it. "I can't even imagine what it looks like, so I can't get too high-minded about it either. The truth is, I don't care what side of this thing you were on. I've got a list of people I care about, too. Jim's at the top of it. He says this feud between you two is over. Is it?"

"Yes," he said simply.

"What about your people? What about the familiars? Isn't Jim still going to rescue them? I don't blame you for being loyal to them, but how long is it going to be before you're fighting over them again?"

Green flashed through the room and she smelled ozone. She looked over to see him, human again, and still kneeling. "They're dead," he said and cleared his throat.

His words didn't quite make sense to her. It was too big a change in her understanding of the problems at hand for her to get her arms around it all at once. She shook her head and frowned at him, confused. "Wait," she said. "I don't get it. Who's dead? The familiars?"

"The changelings," he said.

"All of them?" she asked, and cringed inwardly. It sounded as if she was asking if someone had eaten all the cookies.

"It was nearly a month ago," he said, a little tremor in his voice. "They'd been gathering here in Arcadia from all over the world, down in our headquarters. All in one place." He shook his head and waved the deaths of his people away with his hand, giving her a reassuring little smile. His voice was strong and clear when he spoke. "But more to your point, they'd already made it clear to me that they had no use for my assistance in the matter of -"

"Was it Jim?" she asked, giving voice to the dread blossoming like a voodoo lily in her gut.

"No," he said hastily, and repeated it more softly. "No. It was Gunmar."

He sank back into silence and began to look around the room for something, while Barbara moved over to the couch and sat, staring fixedly at the floor. Having spotted the broom leaning against a wall, he gave her a quick, questioning glance that she didn't notice. No instruction being received, Walter got slowly to his feet and, retrieving the broom, quietly resumed sweeping.

"Jim said he'd screwed up," she said finally. "He said he let Gunmar out when he went in for Claire's brother. On accident."

"Gunmar was inevitable." Without pausing in his tidying, Walter said it in almost a whisper. "We were always told that. I suppose that much was true. I don't hold Jim responsible for it."

He had his back turned to her as he worked, and Barbara took the few moments of privacy to close her eyes, take off her glasses and rub the bridge of her nose. She wondered what Jim's plan had been. He probably hadn't known either. At least for her, the solution was obvious. You just don't let people bury their family alone.

"How are you doing, Walt?" she asked.

His movements slowed and then stopped as if he was really giving the question some thought. She wondered who else he had left who would ask him that. Jim hadn't mentioned it, and she got the impression that there was some kind of hostility between Walter and the other trolls, though she didn't fully understand its source.

The uneasy feeling at the back of her head was gone now. She rose smoothly from her seat and crossed the room to take the broom from his hands. As she swept up the last pile of dirt, he leaned back against the wall next to the screen that blocked the kitchen from view, still covered with the rug they'd tacked up earlier in the evening. He cleared his throat again.

"Well enough," he said finally.

"Really." She'd intended it as a question, but the doubt in the word was so thick it solidified into a statement.

"No, but I fake it well, don't I?" He said it with a shaky laugh, and she had to smile, still helplessly charmed by his unique brand of ironic braggadocio. She leaned the broom against the rug and tipped her head, trying to catch his eyes, but he closed and rubbed them.

"Tell me what happened?" she said, turning it into a question.

"Oh," he breathed, drawing out the vowel. "I heard it all second hand from Nomura. Burkhanov hid in a shower stall and called her. He said he thought Gunmar had left for Trollmarket, but he came back, or maybe he never left. Either way, Gunmar and a few of his soldiers blocked the exits and went up and down the hallways, executing everyone they could find. Apparently some were trying to organize and fight back, but then the call dropped. Nomura wasn't able to get anyone on the phone after that." His voice dropped to a near-whisper. "There would have been hundreds there. Kuang. Ovcharenko. Maufillastre. Scaarbach."

"Hundreds of changelings and they couldn't defeat him?"

"Gunmar is twenty feet tall and weighs tons. And we're not built for combat. Not like that. It would have been a slaughter." He took a deep, shaky breath. "I didn't know everyone personally. We were deployed all over the world. But I knew enough. We understood each other, you know? We were contentious and grasping, but we weren't bloodthirsty. Not like Bular. You know, I was gone for weeks before Gunmar got out but no one gave me up. I was expecting to suddenly find myself trapped in my troll form at any moment, either because of Jim or Gunmar. But it didn't happen. They didn't give me up."

He smiled a little at that, and when he glanced at her, his green eyes were bright. He blinked away unshed tears. "We're not supposed to have friends, but…" He trailed off and took a deep breath.

"When I was young, still in the Darklands, they used to tell us that when Gunmar was free, we would be, too. We were told that we were better than the other trolls, even though they looked down on us, called us impure. When he was out and those who despised us were defeated, our lives would be our own. God, the naïveté of it! What was the point? For a millennium we served loyally. They threatened us, beat us, crippled us, killed us, but still we served. Why? If he hated us that much… Did someone say something, something perfectly innocuous and reasonable, and it enraged him? Or-or was it me? Was it because I betrayed him? Did they suffer for me?"

His breathing grew ragged and quick. He coughed. Barbara came up to him, reaching for his hand, but he jerked it back and stepped away, saying, "No, no. Not now. Don't be…" His voice cracked and he held his hands up defensively.

"Walt…" She followed him, her hand still out.

"Don't," he pleaded with a hitch in his breath, but let her approach, shoulders hunched in resignation. Her fingers touched his, and it was as if his strings were cut. He sank to the floor and covered his face with his hands. She followed him down and put her arm around his back while he took deep, shuddering breaths. After a few seconds had passed, she gave him a reassuring pat and went to retrieve a box of Kleenex from the coffee table. She handed over a tissue and he blew his nose noisily.

"I really thought I could save them," he said, wiping his face with another sheet.

In her world, the world of the ER, she'd often sat with the grieving families of the people she couldn't save. Usually she did her best to drop the information and then stick around only long enough for it to sink in and to answer some questions when it did. She couldn't afford to fully empathize because she'd be going right back in to another patient in just a few moments and she needed to be fully present for them.

Now, when she could finally afford to be present for the grief, she couldn't think of what to say. Nothing she could think of sounded right. It wasn't okay, and she'd never much believed in a better place. Would changelings even go there if there was one? She took his hand and squeezed it. He looked down at their hands, bewilderment in his eyes for a fraction of a second before he smiled and squeezed back.

"You always make it so hard to compartmentalize," he said with a breathy laugh.

"Maybe you don't need to anymore," she said.

"Maybe I don't." He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb. "I imagine this isn't easy for you, either. I was born into it, but you…"

"It's a lot to take in," she admitted. "Pieces keep coming back to me. The painting helped."

"Painting?"

She shot a glance over toward the basement door in the alcove to her right, where the dining room furniture now sat, chairs stacked on table. "Uh-huh. I didn't know it at the time, but I was painting goblins and Mr. Blinky and… you."

"Me? Why would you… Oh, the..." He nodded and waved a hand toward the space behind his ear.

"With the-" She waved her hand behind her head as well. "Yeah. It's hard to see all at once." She held her hands up as if holding an invisible beach ball. "I can think about you, but then I start to think about this war and how you've been in it for, oh my god, centuries, and you turn green." She turned the imaginary ball. "And it's like I can't see what's on the other side anymore." She rested her hands in her lap.

"I can't get my head around…" She waved a hand at him, encompassing his whole body. "You," she finished. "I mean, back when you were just British, well, that's just a step away from being Canadian, and Canadian is practically American. All it really amounted to was a sexy accent. But now you might as well be from Mars." She looked over at the spot on the floor where he had literally and sincerely bowed to her. "It's a little scary." When she looked back at him, he was smiling. "What?"

"You think my accent is sexy?"

She sighed mournfully. "You know, Walt, I've been trying to think of a way to say this for a while now…"

"Uh-huh," he encouraged, listening attentively.

"And now is as good a time to say it as any. I just don't want you to take this the wrong way."

He nodded.

"Your accent…" She took a deep breath and looked him straight in the eyes. "Could stand to be a little more Canadian."

"I see." He nodded soberly, pursing his lips. "More… bacony?"

"Like socialized medicine wrapped up in flannel," she said, lowering her eyelids and tipping her head in what she hoped was a seductive way. He almost lost it. He coughed loudly, which she let slide, and blinked heavily once but managed to maintain eye contact. She was pretty sure if she crossed her eyes now, she'd win, but they'd disallowed that months ago. She remembered the rules now. He took a deep breath, and she could tell he was winding up for something good.

In a flat, nasal voice, he said, "Well, den I guess I'll just nip out and win dis war real good, den, eh?"

She didn't even have the chance to bite her lip before bursting into laughter. She wrapped her arms around her midsection and doubled over, giggling. Walter was laughing, too, but trying to control it. He gasped for air, trying to speak and failing.

Finally, in the same nasal voice, he managed, "How does it feel to lose your own challenge, der, Lake?"

She fell over on her side and gasped, "Like - like being tied - to train tracks - by Snidely Whiplash."

"Nell!" he cried, the impression ruined by his laughing through it.

She pointed at him and said, "I think that was a hat trick!"

Laughter came in waves for the next few minutes. Someone said something about bagged milk and that sent them off on a dairy-related tangent. They wound down slowly, catching their breath as the waves subsided, like the tide rolling out. It wasn't until then that she realized he hadn't snorted the way he used to when he laughed, not once. No more pretending, he'd said. This is me.

She'd made her mind up hours ago, though she hadn't known it at the time. Her son stood there in the living room with his plate armor and his smart phone while the other adults clucked over their own children.

"Who are you calling?" she'd asked, pushing her glasses up her nose.

"Um…" Jim gave her a nervous little glance up. "Mr. Strickler? If there's another goblin attack while we're gone, he can help out," he was quick to add. "And he can answer more questions than we can right now."

"Oh, he'll answer some questions, alright," she'd said.

"So you won't be mad if I call him?"

"Not at you. Call him."

The decision caught up with her and she looked at him, trying to imagine the other him at the same time. Maybe it was there in his eyes, green as gemstones, mischievous and secretive - There's a lot you don't know about me. Or maybe it was in the way he'd never been the slightest bit intimidated by her, not by her job or her height or the way she unabashedly asked him out rather than waiting for him to come around, the kinds of things that had always worried James. She sensed something wild and alien about that other him and she wanted to see more of it.

"Promise me something?" she asked.

"Anything."

"No more pretending, and not just for tonight. Ever. No more manipulation. No more secrets, even if the truth is weird or ugly. I need to know I can trust you."

"Yes, of course," he said, nodding eagerly. Then he paused. "Barbara… I've spent my life compartmentalizing and hiding things, revealing different things to different people. It's an old habit, practically instinct now. If I… slip, will you give me the chance to make it right?"

"I think I can do that," she said and smiled.

Barbara got to her feet and dusted off her pants. Reaching down, she offered him a hand up, which he took, smiling. She gave him a little bump with her shoulder before walking over to the alcove by the basement stairs and the dining table and chairs temporarily stored there. She took a chair and set it upright on the floor.

"Let's put this back together again," she said.


End file.
